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Sunday, July 31, 2016

Antisemitic graffiti has been discovered outside the Fountain Leisure Centre in Brentford, West London.

The graffiti, found on a hoarding in prominent view of a main road, reads “Jude Rauss” – or “Jew Out”, which was perhaps intended to read “Juden Raus”, “Jews Out”, an infamous 1936 German board game based on deporting Jews to Mandatory Palestine with disputed linked to the Nazi Party.

The graffiti also shows a Star of David suspended in a “hangman” picture, an image which could be viewed as an unambiguous threat.

The graffiti also seems to depict a flag-like design using the combination of red and black – colours associated with the far-left ideology of Anarcho-Communism.

[...] The problem – as it was in the 1930s – is discursive as well as
physical.

A "day of rage" march in Parisin January 2014 saw far-right
Catholics marching alongside young Muslim north African men from the
banlieues. They were united with the chant: “Juif, la France n’est pas à
toi" (Jews: France is not for you).

Meanwhile, in Berlin last week, I
saw a man of Middle Eastern-appearance walking up and down near the
Tiergartenstrasse wearing a sign and holding up a placard. It read,
helpfully, in both English and German: ‘The Zionist hides Behind the
Secret Agency and terrorizes the Whole World’.

We can't solve Europe's problems
but we can clean up our own by first recognising their seriousness,
whether in the institutional culture of the Labour party or on the
streets, where offline abuse often take place.

According to Mark Gardner
of the Community Security Trust, which monitors anti-Semitic incidents,
attacks on Jews in the UK often come with "Nazi invective", including
"Heil Hitler", a slogan favoured by both white and non-white attackers.
It all gets especially vicious when Israel is at war. In 2014, during
the six weeks of the Israel-Gaza war, the CST recorded an unprecedented 1,174 number of anti-Semitic incidents, while the hashtag #hitlerwasright trended.

Too often, in the face of all this, Jews are assumed to be simply
making a fuss, to be hogging the limelight as usual. But as long as
there are Jews there will be anti-Semitism, and as long as there are
Jewish women there will be a particularly vile sexualised variant of it.
Until the nature and reach of such sentiment is acknowledged, things
will only get uglier.

[...] More important, Europeans will have to learn that powerlessness can
be as corrupting as power—and much more dangerous. The storm of terror
that is descending on Europe will not end in some new politics of
inclusion, community outreach, more foreign aid or one of Mrs. Merkel’s
diplomatic Rube Goldbergs. It will end in rivers of blood. Theirs or yours?

In
all this, the best guide to how Europe can find its way to safety is
the country it has spent the best part of the last 50 years lecturing
and vilifying: Israel. For now, it’s the only country in the West that
refuses to risk the safety of its citizens on someone else’s notion of
human rights or altar of peace.

Europeans will no doubt look to
Israel for tactical tips in the battle against terrorism—crowd
management techniques and so on—but what they really need to learn from
the Jewish state is the moral lesson. Namely, that identity can be a
great preserver of liberty, and that free societies cannot survive
through progressive accommodations to barbarians.

A damning new report has found that public attitudes have changed dramatically in the past two years, with many Scots now scared to reveal their Jewish identity.

Disturbingly, some second or third generation Holocaust survivors even compared modern Scotland with Germany in the 1930s due to the growing sense that Jewish people are not safe or welcome here.

The study blames “unbalanced political comment”, a lack of confidence in the police and widespread anti-Israel sentiment for the rapidly worsening situation.

One Jewish man in his 60s, living in Glasgow, said: “When people are murdered just because they shop in a kosher deli in Paris or attend a batmitzvah in Copenhagen, it’s natural for everyone who goes to the equivalent venues in Scotland to think that it could just as easily have been a Glasgow deli or an Edinburgh batmitzvah, and to change their behaviour.

Another man in his 30s, living in Edinburgh, said: “I have come to realise that identifying myself as a Jewish Israeli, or just identifying my wife as Jewish or our house as one where Jewish people live, might pose a risk to our lives and our property.”

A woman, in her 50s living in the Highlands, asked: “Is it safe to advertise a Jewish event in a local newspaper?”

The two-year study, What’s Changed About Being Jewish in Scotland, was commissioned by the Scottish Government and carried out by The Scottish Council of Jewish Communities (SCoJeC).

Director Ephraim Borowski said First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was trying to make Jewish people in Scotland feel safe but the report questions the lack of support from some in her party.

Friday, July 29, 2016

Extremist Islamist books promoting antisemitism and preaching hatred
toward non-Muslims were distributed by imams in prisons for months
despite jail authorities having been alerted to their discovery, The Times has learnt.

Among the prohibited titles are a tract described as the Mein Kampf of
Islamist terrorism, a pamphlet extolling the virtues of violent jihad
and a book urging Muslims to fight and subjugate unbelievers.

One
of the books, by the jihadist ideologue Sayyid Qutb, blames Jews for
“materialism, animal sexuality, the destruction of the family and the
dissolution of society”.

Unknown perpetrators hurled firebombs at the gravesite of a Hasidic luminary in central Ukraine.

The incident in Shpola, a city located 120 miles south of the capital, Kiev, occurred Sunday evening, according to Eduard Dolinsky, director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee.

On Monday, Dolinsky wrote on Facebook that the perpetrators tried to set on fire a structure built near the gravesite of Rabbi Aryeh Leib Alter, one of the earliest leaders of the Ger hasidic dynasty. He died in 1811 and was also known as the Sefat Emet after the book he wrote.

Thursday, July 28, 2016

The Simon Wiesenthal Center has expressed outrage over the recent annulment of the 1946 conviction of Croatian Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac, for treason and collaboration with the Nazi-aligned Ustasha regime.

“As the leading Catholic priest in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), Stepinac’s responsibility was to speak out on behalf of the innocent victims of the Ustasha, not to lend spiritual support to their murderers,” said the Wiesenthal Center’s top Nazi-hunter, Dr. Efraim Zuroff. “The genocidal campaign waged by the Ustasha against Serbs, their active participation in Holocaust crimes against Jews, and the murder of Roma and anti-fascist Croatians carried out in their network of concentration camps are among the most heinous crimes of World War II. No person who supported that regime should have their conviction annulled.”

The Zagreb County Court Judge Ivan Turudic overturned the verdict last week, saying it had violated the right to a fair trial, the prohibition of forced labor, and the rule of law.

Zuroff was dismissive of accounts that Stepinac later condemned Ustasha atrocities against Jews and Serbs.

“Bottom line is, he was [NDH leader] Ante Pavelić’s priest – that says it all, and it’s totally unforgivable,” he told The Jerusalem Post on Monday. “He openly supported the regime which committed mass murder, and afforded them spiritual comfort and support.”

Zuroff said the stance Stepinac took was of “huge significance,” and that for this reason, the annulment of the verdict is cause for celebration for nationalist and ultra-rightwing Croatians.

The recent NATO summit, held for the first time ever in Warsaw, was a triumph for Poland’s defense minister, Antoni Macierewicz.

(...)

Yet Macierewicz has some secrets. For years he has been editor-in-chief, co-owner and author of the far-right newspaper Głos (Voice), which he also founded. It had few readers, so few took notice of its contents. And in recent years Macierewicz has kept quiet about his role there, as if wanting to keep it that way.

An examination of the publication during Macierewicz’s most active years as its chief suggests one reason why. In the issues from 1996 alone I found 43 anti-Semitic articles, some signed by Macierewicz himself.

After I wrote about this recently for the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyrborcza, where I am a columnist, even the Anti-Defamation League expressed concern.

The French satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné has reported on Wednesday that a language teacher at one of the most prestigious Paris high schools, the Lycée Janson de Sailly, had asked her A-level students (khâgne) to follow her on Facebook, where she provided them with a special type of tuition.

On March 10, 2016, she inveighed against "the American Jewish lobby" arguing that it supported Hillary Clinton.

The teacher then hit out at President François Hollande by accusing him of being a "Jew who used his status as a member of the [Jewish] community to climb up the political ladder. He has repudiated his origins and claims on Wikipedia to have a suitable 'Catholic' father."

She further wrote that "Hollande is Jewish and denies the fact. Things will now begin to turn sour, because the situation among the kikes doesn't look so good anymore". She used the word "juiverie", an extremely derogatory and insulting term used by anti-semites.

On the same day she posted the following message: "The Holocaust was planned and organised by the Jews".

Students complained to one of their teachers, who alerted the headmaster.

A large number of children and youth again participated in this year’s Berlin Al-Quds march. They carried signs that read “Zionism is racism!“, “Zionism promotes antisemitism!“ and shouted the legally restrained slogan “Death Israel“ (“الموت لاسرائیل”) .

approximately 200 people in the west Ukrainian city of Ternopil presented local authorities with a petition to remove from the city’s coat of arms a star shape they said was a Jewish symbol, the Star of David.

The coat of arms of Ternopil features a fortress above the star shape that has six points and comprises 12 triangles – half of them khaki colored and the rest blank. Under the star is a horizontal crescent divided into a khaki half and a blank one. The shield bearing those symbols is crowned by the Ukrainian trident — the Sign of Princely State of Volodymyr the Great, which is the main national symbol and the country’s coat of arms.

The petitioners want the city to “replace the Jewish Star of David with the traditional Ukrainian octagon” and “complement the star and crescent with a Christian cross, which must go back to the top of the trident,” the news website Ukraina Moloda reported Friday.

They cited the writings of a Ukrainian fundamentalist Christian who said the Star of David is “associated with the symbol of the antichrist.

A Belgian tennis club suspended a player who told a Jewish competitor on the court, “All of you should have been gassed.”

Alain Verlaak made the remark to a Maccabi player at the Tennis 7th Olympics club in Antwerp on July 22, the Belgian monthly Joods Actueel reported Tuesday.

The incident occurred during a tournament of the VTV national tennis association of the Flemish Region – one of the three states that make up the Belgian federal kingdom.

The Jewish player, who asked to be identified only as Serge S. due to security concerns, told Joods Actueel the incident evolved after a dispute over the validity of a point lost to Verlaak, who was leading in the match. Ludo Depooter, the tournament organizer, confirmed the details of the incident to Joods Actueel.

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Benjamin-Immanuel Hoff, Chief of the State Chancellery of Thuringia, got a letter threatening death and destruction to all Jews and Muslims. The letter rants against Muslims and says there's no alternative but to open up the concentration camps again.

The letter then ends by saying "We've gassed 6 million Jews in Europe, so it won't be difficult for us to eliminate 3 million Muslims and the rest of the Jews!". He specifically names two Jews - Reinhard Schramm, chairman of the Jewish community in Thuringia, and Stephan Kramer, former secretary-general of the Central Council of Jews in Germany.

Oliver Shore, a Jewish British student, recently wrote an op-ed titled "The NUS turns its back on Jewish students. Again". Shore refers to a recent decision by the National Union of Students that prevents Jewish students from choosing a representative on the Anti-Racism and Anti-Fascism committee (ARAF).

This was reported on the Dutch site The Post under the headline "Jewish Students Sidelined by Muslim President of British Student Union".

Carel Bruring, head of the green party GroenLinks in Goes, had a lot of trouble seeing how that's antisemitism.

He tweeted as follows to this article:

"Okay. Took some effort and took a while, and with some the goodwill, one can explain it as antisemitic. #sigh"

In the early evening of July 15th in the Stieglitz Town Hall Station a man, brandishing a knife, shouted various antisemitic insults.

Some of the things the man shouted included ‘shit jew’ and ‘all the jews are to blame’. He then went on to shout about the link between ‘the jews, the Americans and the government’, seemingly parroting some form of antisemitic conspiracy theory.

The man repeatedly made stabbing motions with the knife. The police have been alerted and are investigating.

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Three so-called Stolpersteine were stolen from Graaf Florisstraat and Mathenesserlaan in Rotterdam, RTV Rijnmond reports. These memorial stones consist of plaques built into the sidewalk in front of houses where people lived who were deported in the Second World War. It mostly involves Jewish people.

It is unclear exactly when the plaques were stolen. According to the local broadcaster, the police have no indication that other plaques are missing.

Romeu Monteiro, a long-standing and outstanding Portuguese pro-Israel militant, wrote this from Lisbon (20 July 2016):

This morning there were a few Israeli guys on the subway and I was very
excited thinking I could show off a little bit of my Hebrew.

But I
ended up not interacting with them, because every time I approach
Israelis in Portugal and ask them if they are from Israel they look
surprised, like they were uncovered and for a few seconds they look like
they are thinking "Who is this guy? Does he want to murder us?" before
they reply...

It's a little too strange, it always seems like I'm scaring them, and I feel like a creep.

The German government is employing various official methods to support anti-Israel activity, the president of a major watchdog group told The Algemeiner on Monday.

Professor Gerald Steinberg, President of Israel-based NGO Monitor was referring to a new report his organization released on Sunday, revealing how Germany’s Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) — “the primary German federal donor to civil society organizations and activities” — has directed significant funds towards Israeli NGOs that promote the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and advocate a “one-state” solution.

According to the NGO Monitor report, between 2012 and 2015 alone, €4 million ($4.4 million) of German taxpayer money was granted to 15 Israeli NGOs, with 42 percent of that funding going to anti-Israel groups. This sum does not include other grants and funding to local actors, such as Palestinian NGOs and other German and international groups, the report stated.

Monday, July 25, 2016

Poland’s foreign minister on Friday defended the country’s education minister, saying her remarks, which appeared to deny Polish responsibility for two massacres of Jews in the 1940s, have been misunderstood.

The comments by Foreign Minister Witold Wszczykowski showed that the on-and-off soul searching in Poland regarding the Holocaust is far from over.

(...)

Waszczykowski, on a visit to Washington, said “I will keep patiently explaining (to the critics) that they have misunderstood minister Zalewska’s words.” He did not elaborate how the comments were misunderstood.

In this drab city 55 miles west of Vilnius, there are few heritage sites as mysterious and lovely looking as the Seventh Fort.

This 18-acre red-brick bunker complex, which dates to 1882, features massive underground passages that connect its halls and chambers. Above ground, the hilltop fortress is carpeted with lush grass and flowers whose yellow blooms attract bees and songbirds along with families who come here to frolic in the brief Baltic summer.

It’s also a popular venue for graduation parties and wedding receptions, complete with buffets and barbecues, as well as summer camps for children who enjoy the elaborate treasure hunts around the premises.

Most of the visitors are unaware that they are playing, dining and celebrating at a former concentration camp.

In 1941, thousands of Jews were imprisoned, starved and finally massacred by Lithuanian Nazi collaborators at the Seventh Fort in what was then the largest mass killing in the country’s history. The complex is believed to be the first concentration camp located on territory that Nazi Germany conquered following its eastward invasion.

An academic seminar at a German university claims Israel’s military harvests organs from Palestinians and the Jewish state is responsible for a genocide.

“Our sons were robbed of their organs,” was the title of a part of the seminar’s course material, Rebecca Seidler, an academic who blew the whistle on the anti-Israel material, told the weekly German-Jewish newspaper Jüdische Allgemeine Zeitung in an article published Thursday.

The paper reported that the University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HAWK) offers a course on “The Social Situation of Youths in Palestine,” which contains the allegedly anti-Semitic material.

After reviewing the content of the course, Seidler, who was slated to conduct the seminar, complained to the university’s management.

The dean of the faculty of Social Work and Health, Christa Paulini, dismissed Seidler’s criticism in a telephone conversation as being overly sensitive.

Luc Descheemaeker teaches art and "culture" at the Sint-Jozefsinstituut at Torhout, a catholic school in Flanders. Regards, a Belgian Jewish magazine, (July 2016 issue) contacted the school and was told that they were immensely proud ("très fière") that one of their teachers had been awarded the prize. The matter seems to have rested there.

On 18 December, Luc Descheemaeker proudly posted on his blog his award-winning Iran Holocaust-mocking cartoon "embellished" with a drawing by British street artist Banksy, titled Report Descheemaeker vs BANKSY in Tehran (see Resistart too). Whereas Banksy is an original artist, Luc Descheemaeker's work is unimaginative and dull resorting to the recycling of conventional images. It is extremely doubtful that Banksy and any serious artist would stoop so low as to take part in a Holocaust-mocking contest considering the theme and the number of Holocaust deniers and Jew haters that took part.

Descheemaeker is much appreciated by his Catholic school, the media (Nieuwsblad reported that he had won a prize in Iran, but not a word about the content) and the local authorities at Turhout. Except for two Belgian Jewish magazines, the fact that he participated in an antisemitic contest doesn't seem to bother many people in Belgium.

The carton below is by Zéon, known for his antisemitism, and won the first prize. It was lifted from Alain Soral's blog Egalité et Réconciliation an posted by Descheemaeker - which goes to show something about his tastes and leanings. Alain Soral is a friend of Dieudonné who hates Jews and gays.

UBU PAN, a Belgian satirical magazine, reported (20 July 2016 issue) that law-makers from three francophone parties (Socialists, Humanists (CDH) and Greens) had planned to conduct, yet again, a "fact-finding mission" in Israel, at tax-payers' expense.

The purpose of the "fact-finding mission" was to check and report back on the way Palestinian prisoners are treated.

To such a noble and enlightened end, they lodged a request with the Israeli Governement and - surprise surprise - they got a positive answer. On condition that Israeli law-makers were authorised first to conduct a "fact-finding mission" on how prisons are run and prisoners treated... in Belgium.

Sunday, July 24, 2016

A Jewish man has been assaulted on a bus by a woman shouting antisemitic abuse. Just after 10:00 this morning, a woman boarded the 253 bus in Amhurst Park in Stamford Hill, north London, and began shouting antisemitic abuse at a Jewish man who was already on the bus. She then proceeded to pour a bottle of juice over him and two Muslim ladies on the bus intervened to stop the attack.

Leon David made Aliyah from Greece to Israel. Asked whether he experienced antisemitism in Greece he answers: "Of course. Many times I had to clean up neo-Nazi graffiti and deal with racist abuse."

But the most memorable incident was when a teacher, who did not know he was Jewish, told the class that what Israel is doing to the Palestinians is just like what Hitler did to the Jews. He later approached the teacher and she apologized, but the incident encouraged him to come to Israel.

A British lawmaker who said Israel would eventually disappear accused the Jewish state of being a major cause in the rise of jihadism worldwide.

Following the statement Thursday by Jenny Tonge, a House of Lords member from the Liberal Democrat party, the Board of Deputies of British Jews called on the party’s head to fire her.

“The treatment of the Palestinians by Israel is a major cause of the rise of extreme Islamism and Daesh,” Tonge said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State terrorist organization. She said Israel was provoking a generation of violent extremists who would have “a justified grudge” against Israel and Britain.

The Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza reports that on 18 July the civil trial began at a court in Kraków of the producers of a German television series set during the Second World War and German television station ZDF. A Polish veterans' association and Zbigniew Radlowski, now 92 years old, who was a Polish resistance fighter during the war, have sued the producers of the television program over scenes depicting Polish anti-Semitism.

The plaintiffs are demanding that an apology be broadcast by all television stations that have shown the series and are also demanding compensation in the amount of 25 000 złoty (approximately EUR 6 000). "I was outraged, I consider the film to be a falsification," testified Radlowski, who participated in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 and was imprisoned in Auschwitz concentration camp.

"I had the feeling the creators of the program are doing their best to place some of the blame for the Holocaust on the Poles," Radlowski told the court. His attorney, Monika Brzozowska, highlighted particular scenes that give the impression that Polish people sold food to resistance fighters from the Home Army on the condition that none of it be given to Jewish people.

In another scene, Home Army soldiers attack a train transporting prisoners but do not free them "because they are Jews, and those are worse than the Communists". The plaintiffs believe the series should include a warning prior to each broadcast as to who was to blame for the Holocaust.

A young veiled woman and her mother who was not veiled were crouching on the floor of a passenger carriage. A baby was sitting next to them on a stroller. They were blocking the way.

Both were very aggressive and were taunting the "French" around them. The passengers felt nervous and furious but did not react.The women noticed that Amaury Grandgil was reading a newspaper which reported on the Nice terrorist attack and they opined: "Anyway, the attacks are the fault of the Jews, they plan attacks so that people become racist against Muslims because it is the Jews who run France ..."

Friday, July 22, 2016

Europeans have always been very critical of how Israel deals with terrorism and shown little empathy to Jewish victims. One finds the same mindset when it happens in Europe - finding excuses, explanations, justifications etc.? But there is a change. Israel is being presented more sympathetically recently.

Israel’s daily experience of terror doesn’t seem so distant to Europeans
anymore, several German Jewish community leaders remarked, a day after
four people were severely wounded in a ax attack on a train in Würzburg.

“We
are shocked and in deep grief and extend our condolences to the
wounded and their families,” said president of the Jewish Community of
Munich and Upper Bavaria, Charlotte Knobloch.

She notes that Israel has had to deal with constant terror attacks for
almost 70 years: “It’s daily business there and it is starting here
too,” she laments, though she expresses hope that it will also help to
establish understanding and empathy for Israel.

“In Germany they don’t have a clue what it means to be
hated and that’s why we don’t have understanding here for Israel’s
actions and why the BDS movement is so strong...They have no idea what
it means to be surrounded by people who want to kill you, so they don’t
know how to deal with these destructive and hateful attitudes,” she
adds. [...]

“This is what we know from the streets of Israel,” echoes Sacha
Stawski, president of the pro-Israel organization, Honestly Concerned,
referring as well to the deadly truck attack in Nice, France just
several days earlier. “The question is whether people will understand
that it’s the same terror as in Israel,” he says, skeptical that this
will happen quite yet.

President of Maccabi Germany, Alon Meyer,
expresses a similar sentiment. “From day to day it’s becoming worse
here in Europe and we need to get used to the situation that Israel has
already experienced for so long,” he tells the Post. “Everyday there
is something in Israel and people no longer write about it because it’s
normal already. But now they realize that it’s no longer so far away.
It affects everyone, and we’re not so secure here either.” [...]

“When we talk about integration, we talk
about integration in our values, not only in our economy and school
system,” Knobloch emphasizes, highlighting that many of the refugees
come from “countries in which hate against Israel and Jews is a
constitutional part of the education and socialization.”

Knobloch
muses that there must have been signs of radicalization in the
teenager who perpetrated the train attack. “He’s been living in Germany
for two years now, so it is alarming that nobody saw this. That’s what
we Jews are afraid of, that there is too much naivety.”

Lawyers acting for the firm challenging the prime minister’s authority to leave the European Union have been subjected to anti-Semitic abuse, a top barrister has said.

(...)

“The publicity that has accompanied notification of the legal issue has provoked a large quantity of abuse directed at my solicitors,” said Pannick. “It is racist abuse, it is anti-Semitic abuse and it is objectionable. It is contempt of court for people to make threats.”

He asked Leveson, who is also Jewish, whether the names of claimants should be redacted, given the abuse, saying: “People have been deterred from [making legal claims]… “It is a very serious criminal matter for people to make threats.”

Thursday, July 21, 2016

As many have already noted, the spree of recent Islamist terror attacks
across Europe feel reminiscent of some of the Palestinian attacks that
Israeli civilians have been enduring for decades. And as Europeans
confront this wave of violence, they are fast adopting the same means
that Israelis have been forced take when trying to defend themselves.
Yesterday, when an Afghan migrant and Islamic State devotee in Germany
began attacking commuters on a busy train, he was quickly shot and
killed by security. Similarly, the horrific truck attack last week in
Nice was only brought to an end when the French police shot and killed
Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who also appears to have been linked with
ISIS.

When
comparable knife attacks and car rammings have happened in Israel,
security forces there acted similarly. Of course, on many occasions,
Israel’s border police and army have managed to shoot and merely disable
assailants. But when that has not been possible, Palestinian attackers
have been shot and killed in an effort to save the lives of Israeli
civilians in immediate harm’s way. It would seem morally obvious that
sometimes this is what has to be done to bring a terror assault to the
swiftest possible conclusion.

Yet Sweden’s Foreign Minister Margot
Wallstrom had an objection to Israelis defending themselves in this
way. In January, when allegations were made in the Swedish parliament
that Israel was perpetrating “extrajudicial executions” of Palestinian
attackers, Wallstrom gave credence to these allegations. “It is vital
that there is a thorough, credible investigation into these deaths in
order to clarify and bring about possible accountability,” she said. By
the same standard, we should now expect to hear Sweden’s foreign
ministry call upon their French and German neighbors to undertake
investigations into the circumstances under which the German train and
Nice attackers were killed.

Wallstrom’s talk of bringing about
“possible accountability” is especially galling. The notion that it is
members of Israel’s security forces who should be interrogated and
punished for acting to neutralize a terror threat is an unspeakable
moral inversion. [...]

Nevertheless, the question is not one of
whether Wallstrom’s comments about Israel were acceptable; we already
knew that they were not. Rather, the question here is whether the
Swedish foreign ministry is going to be consistent because a standard
has now been set. As such, Margot Wallstrom has a choice on her hands.
Either she can come out and call for equivalent investigations into the
actions of the German and French police—and provoke popular and
diplomatic fury from across Europe—or she could not hold European
countries to the same standard she holds Israel to, and in doing so
confirm that she operates a bigoted and discriminatory attitude toward
the Jewish state.

When Wallstrom made her comments in January many
will have assumed the latter to have been the case. But if she cares
to, recent events have now provided her with an opportunity to prove
otherwise.

Two bicyclists in their twenties stopped for a red light next to the victim and asked him if he's Jewish. When he answered in the affirmative, one of the men said he's a Palestinians, cursed the victim, threatened to harm him and his family and then spit on him. He also took pictures of the victim with his phone.

A Spanish city trying to increase tourism lost a direct flight connection with Israel over its symbolic support for boycotting the Jewish state, a Spanish newspaper reported.

The Spain branch of El Al for months had negotiated with tourist officials from the autonomous region of Galicia, in northern Spain, over opening a direct line between its capital, Santiago de Compostella, and Tel Aviv, but the talks failed following the passage in November of a non-binding city council motion in favor of boycotting Israel, La Voz de Galicica reported Wednesday.

The very "monstrous first" happened on 27 July 1980 in Antwerp when a Palestinia terrorist hurled two hand grenades at a group of Jewish children, leaving David Kohane, 15, dead and several wounded, the youngest being Willy and Marcel GJeiser, aged 11 and 9 (JTA):

Jewish communal institutions throughout Belgium have been granted
special round the clock police protection following yesterday’s
terrorist attack against a group of Jewish teenagers in Antwerp which
resulted in the death of a 15-year-old boy and the wounding of 20 other
persons. The attacker, a man carrying Moroccan travel documents, hurled
two grenades at a group of 40 children waiting to board a bus for summer
camp.

Paris-born David Kohane, whose parents had just driven him to the
Antwerp Community Center and were still present when the attack took
place, was killed on the spot. Close to 20 children were wounded, 17
seriously and six of them are still in critical condition. Most of the
parents, members of the Agudat Israel, and generally employed in the
diamond industry, saw the attack and then helped chase the assailant. [...]

A few yards away from the arrest scene, pandemonium had broken loose.
Youngsters were bleeding profusely from their wounds and crying out in
pain. Parents were trying to give first aid, passers-by massed in a
circle and after a few minutes dozens of ambulances and police cars
rushed to the site of the attack. [...]

Senior government ministers seem embarrassed in the aftermath of a
prisoner-for-hostages swap over the weekend that freed a Palestinian
terrorist convicted of murdering a Jewish child in Antwerp 10 years ago.

Foreign Minister Mark Eyskens passed off as a coincidence the
simultaneous release of Said Nasser from Leuven Prison near Brussels and
the freeing of four members of the Houtekins family, who were turned
over to Belgian authorities in Cairo on Saturday, after more than three
years in captivity.

Nasser, said to belong to the Abu Nidal terrorist group, was swiftly removed from Belgium and reportedly also landed in Cairo.

The Jewish community is outraged by the deal, which the news media reported months ago to be pending. read more

Telegraph columnist Bryony Gordon penned an op-ed (Now they have come for families,
July 16) on the Nice terror attack suggesting that the truck-ramming
assault that claimed at least 84 lives represented the first time in the
West that jihadists have targeted children.In noting that at least 10 children were
killed by the Tunisian-born terrorist, named Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel,
Gordon makes the following point:

There is nothing more
innocent than a child. Nothing. That is not to say that the deaths at
the Bataclan or in Brussels were any less tragic than those that
occurred on Bastille Day; or that the 84 adults who were killed on Thursday night in Nice should
be grieved less than the ten children who found their lives cut short
just as the holidays were beginning. It is not at all. It is simply to
say that the attack in Nice has shown that nothing is sacred any more.
Nothing. Men, women, children… to fanatics like Mohamed Lahouaiej
Bouhlel, we are no more than human bowling pins. This
September, it will be 15 years since we entered the murky world of
modern terrorism: suicide bombers with scant regard for their own lives
let alone anybody else’s. First they came for the businessmen and women.
Then eventually they came for the young, carefree concert goers.Now they have come for the families. For
the children. Perhaps this should not be a surprise given they have
been doing it for years in Syria and Iraq. But in the western world, it is a monstrous first.

However, even if we were to ignore attacks on children in Israel, Nice did not represent a monstrous “first” in the West.

In 2012, three Jewish children and one adult were murdered by a jihadist named Mohammed Merah in an attack on a Jewish school in the French city of Toulouse.

Two men were arrested in separate incidents last Sunday, as Jewish Londoners continue to be subjected to antisemitic abuse.

In one incident, a 25-year-old man was detained by Shomrim, the Jewish neighbourhood watch patrol, after he grabbed an elderly religious Jew’s hat, then tried to grab other Jews’ hats and punched them.

In a second incident the same day, Shomrim stopped a 23-year-old man for suddenly shouting antisemitic abuse at a Jewish boy.

(...)

Police are looking for a third man in connection with yet another incident, which took place on Wednesday last week. As a man in a silver van approached a Jewish pedestrian, he opened the window to shout “F***ing Jewish c***” as he drove past. Witnesses are being sought for the incident which occurred at approximately 20:00 on Craven Walk in Hackney.

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Antisemitic material was openly distributed in a park in Berlin (Kreuzberg district) over a few weeks, next to a children's playground.

The material included laminated cartoons and CDs with pictures, text and films. The CDs included a lot of antisemitic material, for example: Holocaust denial, anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist conspiracy theories, as well as accusations that Jews are pedophiles and child-murderers, thereby threatening all Germans.

The BBC has published an analysis of the terrorist atrocity in Nice, claiming that the attach was somehow worse than the murder of Jews at the Hypercacher kosher supermarket last January because in Nice, “the people at large” were targeted despite doing nothing “provocative”.

Through the last 18 months of jihadist terror in France, a simple pattern is emerging: it keeps getting worse. If the January 2015 attacks were aimed at specific groups – Jews and blasphemers – the November follow-up was more indiscriminate. At the Bataclan and at the cafes the Islamists killed young adults, out being European hedonists. This time, it’s gone a step further. In Nice, it is the people at large – families and groups of friends – doing nothing more provocative than attending a national celebration. Ten children were among the dead.

The BBC claimed that it was not as bad when terrorists just killed “Jews and blasphemers”, and then asserted that what has happened in Nice is a “step further” because the Jewish people shopping for their Shabbat meals in the Hypercacher kosher supermarket were not “people at large — families and groups of friends”. Instead, they were clearly “more provocative” by being Jewish and partaking in a Jewish shopping activity.

A German man was arrested in Austria after insulting a fellow train passenger with a Nazi slur only to see him pull out his ID, indicating he was an off-duty officer with the country’s counter-terrorism unit.

The incident happened on a train travelling west from Vienna when the 65-year-old German man began dishing out racial insults to a woman travelling with her young son after the child’s foot had touched the man’s bag.After a man sitting nearby intervened in the incident, the German shouted at him: “I gassed hundreds of tattooed pigs like you in Auschwitz.”

The tattooed man then pulled out his ID showing he is a member of Austria’s special operations unit EKO-Cobra, which happens to be responsible for carrying out counter-terrorism operations in the country.

The off-duty Cobra officer seized the man, who according to witnesses continued to shout insults at him before being taken off the train at Linz station and handed over to police to the cheers of the other passengers.

A senior Jewish member of the National Union of Students has said
that its National Executive Council “isn't a safe space” for Jews.

Izzy Lenga [pictured], who was attending today’s NEC meeting, repeatedly wrote
of her discomfort, tweeting: “I've had to excuse myself out of this room
twice. Twice... I genuinely hate this space”.

She also criticised NUS president Malia Bouattia for approving an
amendment which gave the Union of Jewish Students no say over who
represented Jewish students on the NUS’s Anti-Racism Anti-Fascism (ARAF)
committee.

Iftikhar Mahmood, a Conservative Party politician in Oslo, posted a link to an article blaming Zionists for the Nice attack.

In his defense, Mahmood claims he did not notice what the article was about or that it linked to an antisemitic site (whose tagline is "Intelligent 'anti-Semitism' for thinking Gentiles").

Apparently, an article that obviously blames Israel for the Nice attack is not enough of a 'red flag' for some people.

Indeed, this is not the first time that Mahmood accuses Israel of being a terrorist state.

In this post from November 2015, Mahmood shows Israel (and the US) paying ISIS to attack the world.

In July 2015, Mahmood posted an article about ISIS banning Eid prayers.
Islamic State has banned Eid prayers. Mahmood claims that until now
"The Zionist State IS Israel" was the only one that has banned Muslims
from Eid prayers, and that this tells you who's the architects and
strategists behind Islamic State.

Maybe it's time for the Conservative Party to stop pretending that this isn't straight-out antisemitism.

A new poll shows anti-Semitism is rife among leftwing
Germans, with 34% of respondents saying Jews have “too much influence”
in the country, the Jerusalem Post reported.

The survey, conducted by the Research Association on the SED
[Socialist Unity Party] State at the Free University of Berlin, showed
that 34% of leftwing radicals agreed with the anti-Semitic belief that
Jews are “money-grabbing,” and 16% of Germans defined as radically
left-wing hold anti-Semitic views. A further 13% of radical leftwingers said Jews are consumed with money.

The study included an online survey with 36,000 respondents.

According to its website, the association researches the former East
German communist state and its SED party, which is no longer in
existence. The association seeks “to gain more insight into the outer
and inner conditions that made possible the 40 years of a second German
dictatorship in the 20th century.”

The researchers who led the study, Monika Deutz-Schroeder and Klaus
Schroeder, said anti-Semitic extremist leftism equates “Jew” with
“capitalist” and “exploiter.”

[...] She was supposed to embark on just such a good-will mission earlier this month, this time to an international conference in London, when she was informed by Scotland Yard’s war crimes unit that she was wanted for questioning regarding her service as foreign minister during Israel’s 2008-2009 war on Hamas in Gaza.

It wasn’t Livni’s first run-in with British law: In 2009, she was forced to cancel a visit to London after a local judge, consenting to an appeal by pro-Palestinian activists, issued a warrant for her arrest. The ensuing scandal drove the British government to apologize and promise to change the laws to prevent such unpleasantries from recurring. But the recent effort to seize Livni—by Scotland Yard, no less—proves British officialdom is still thick with civil servants bent on prosecuting a liberal Israeli politician who served as her nation’s top diplomat during a military conflict started by a terrorist organization.

How to respond to such folly? By now, it’s getting a bit exhausting to point out that representatives of Africa’s genocidal regimes, Asia’s tyrannies, and the Middle East’s murderous and repressive states can all visit London unharassed, while emissaries of the Jewish state are perpetually coming under attack.
Similarly, enumerating the astonishing breadth of British assaults on the liberty, limbs, and lives of men and women from Rhodesia to Rishikesh would be too easy. But a glance at more recent violations committed under the banner of the Union Jack is more telling. Should Israel—or, for that matter, the United States—follow Scotland Yard’s lead and summon British officials for questioning concerning their role in, say, the execution of an unarmed and wounded Taliban fighter in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, by a Royal Marines sergeant in December of 2013? Should we seek to indict the Oxford-knotted dons of British diplomacy for that afternoon in September of 2003 in Basra, Iraq, when the men of the First Battalion of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment arrested a 26-year-old hotel receptionist named Baha Mousa, detained him, and tortured and beat him so badly that he died several days later with fractured ribs, a broken nose, and 93 other injuries?
[...]

The officials who sought to indict Livni cared little for any distinction between a dovish diplomat and a hawkish ex-general, for the intricacies and complexities of the conflict, for the gray zones in which adults live and practice politics. To the self-appointed, stiff-upper-lipped agents of the Enlightenment, all Israelis are alike, and all culpable in crimes. There’s a name for such an attitude, but there’s hardly use in crying anti-Semitism. In making a mockery of the very values they are supposed to represent, Livni’s prosecutors, like too many educated people from the West End to the Upper West Side, have sentenced themselves to irrelevance.

An Israeli reporter at the scene of Thursday night’s terrorist attack
in Nice was warned by a resident of the city not to let anyone
recognize his country of origin, cautioning him against speaking Hebrew.

Approached by Channel 2’s Elad Simchayoff – conducting
man-in-the-street interviews along the Promenade des Anglais in the
aftermath of the Bastille Day massacre where it took place – a woman who
refused to show her face on camera said, “You have to be very careful.”

“With what?” asked Simchayoff.

“Because you are Israeli,” she replied. “It’s very dangerous.”

The woman, who said she could not appear in the broadcast, because
she had moved her business to Nice, explained to Simchayoff – who wanted
to know what she meant by “dangerous” – that Israel is subjected to
double standards in Europe.

“When it was the war in Gaza, for example, you had manifestations
[i.e. demonstrations] of thousands and thousands of Arabs on the street…
[But] when the war in Syria began, as well, and children were killed,
[no Arabs demonstrated] on the street. Never.”

The woman also said that it was especially perilous for an Israeli to
be recognized as such in the area, due to media coverage of the
truck-ramming, which left at least 84 dead and 200 wounded. She claimed
that, since the terrorist attack, analysts have been saying, “Look at
how the Israelis protect themselves, [while] we [are unable to do so.]”
And “each Arab” watches TV.

In addition, she said, “There is an atmosphere in Brussels [the
capital of the European Union] that you [Israelis] are the worst. This
is the problem… So be very careful; don’t talk to anybody.”

Some 150 people attended a commemoration in Jedwabne, Poland, on the 75th anniversary of a massacre of hundreds of Polish Jews by their neighbors.

The town’s history is controversial in Poland because it involves complicity in the Holocaust by members of a nation that many perceive primarily as a victim of the German Nazi occupation.

In 1946, well after the country’s liberation from Nazi Germany, a few dozen villagers in Jedwabne burned alive at least 340 local Jews.

In a nation where the Nazis killed 3 million non-Jewish Poles in addition to 3 million Polish Jews, “some found it, and some find it, difficult to accept the very bitter truth” about Jedwabne, Schudrich said. But since then, polls suggest that today approximately half of Poles have come to accept their compatriots’ role at Jedwabne, Schudrich said.

Polish Undersecretary of State Wojciech Kolarski represented Polish President Andrzej Duda at the event, laying a wreath at the monument for the victims.

“To be clear about what happened here: Polish citizens killed their own Polish compatriots of Jewish origin in a way that damaged a long tradition of living side by side,” Kolarski said. “There can be no justification for that.”

Some Polish politicians in the past denied that Poles killed Jews in Jedwabne, including Jadwiga Stolarska, a former senator who stated in Parliament in 2001 that Germans were behind the killings and that “there was no way a Pole could kill a Jew.”

A 14-year-old boy who placed lit fireworks in the pockets of Jewish pedestrians has escaped with paying £20 in compensation and a referral order. The boy was arrested on 31st January in Hackney after volunteers from Shomrim, the Jewish neighbourhood watch patrol, chased and detained the boy, then called the police who arrested him.

The Hackney Youth Offender Panel issued a contract for a total period of a year and ordered the youth to pay £20 in compensation in a stunningly lenient verdict which will do nothing to deter such attacks.

Campaign Against Antisemitism will be raising this judgement with the Ministry of Justice as an example of disturbingly light sentences for antisemitic crime.

Labour MP Margaret Hodge said this morning that she has contacted the police regarding two “really offensive” e-mails that she had received.

Speaking to the Today programme on Radio 4, Mrs Hodge said “I yesterday, for the first time in my 50 years of political life, had to refer two really offensive e-mails I received - antisemitic e-mails – to the police.

“This is not the new politics, it’s actually the old politics. It’s the politics I fought in the 1980s when people like John McDonnell and Ken Livingstone were again in leadership roles.”

Also on the show was James Schneider, National Organiser for the pro-Corbyn Momentum movement. Responding to Mrs Hodge’s comments, Mr Schneider said “the idea that Jeremy Corbyn, or Momentum or those around him are responsible… is about as logical as saying that Margaret Hodge, say, is responsible for the death threats that Jeremy Corbyn has received.”

Sunday, July 17, 2016

A boy of three is among ­hundreds of children being ­investigated by ­police amid a surge in hate crimes .

Figures obtained by the Sunday People under Freedom of Information laws ­reveal 138 youngsters aged 10 or under were ­reported for racial or religious abuse last year.

This compared with 70 in 2011.

(...)

A nine-year-old boy allegedly told a ­classmate “My dad told me not to sit next to Jews” and the boy of three was quizzed by police in Manchester for causing ­harassment, alarm or distress to his victim.

The findings come after a week in which reports of hate crimes rose dramatically in the wake of the EU referendum .

No matter the conspiracy, you can blame the Jews - Jews carried out the attack, Jews are working together with ISIS, Jews brought Muslims to Europe, Jews want Muslim to look bad, the attack was revenge for French support for the Palestinians, Israel wants to help Assad, Jews own the media so don't expect to hear the truth. Etc. etc. etc.

A European Union revision to a controversial resolution by the UN’s cultural body on the Old City of Jerusalem had Israel “concerned” on Thursday, with the Foreign Ministry saying the new text still downplays Jewish historical ties to its holiest site.

A statement from the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem expressed “concern’ over the EU revision to the UNESCO resolution, which it said “nullifies the bond and relationship of the Jewish people to the Temple Mount.”

“The EU proposal still denies the connection of the Jewish people to the Temple Mount,” the Foreign Ministry statement said.

The Daily Mail: How I've seen the France I love torn apart by hatred: LEO McKINSTRY - who has lived there for over a decade and witnessed growing tensions between locals and Muslim hardliners - despairs for the future

Bastille
Day is meant to be a moment of celebration in France. But when my wife
and I had dinner on Thursday evening with neighbours near our French
home in the Loire region, we encountered visceral despair about the
state of the Gallic nation. The
company was charming, the hospitality magnificent, yet parts of the
conversation were profoundly sombre. This was hours before the news of
the Islamist atrocity in Nice emerged, but our friends' concern for
France's future was palpable.

Mass
immigration, the relentless growth of the Muslim population, the
alarming spread of jihadism and the enfeebled stance of President
Hollande's socialist government had left them with a feeling that their
country is increasingly under siege.

[...] One night I
woke up to the smell of acrid smoke in the air [the author lived in Carpentras]. Looking out from my
bedroom window, I saw to my astonishment that five cars had been set on
fire in our street.

On another occasion, while out in the countryside with my wife, I was menaced by a Muslim armed with scythe.

When,
slightly shaken, I told this to a neighbour, who was a French army
veteran, he recounted how a local Muslim had one day threatened to slit
his throat.

Let's
be absolutely clear: most of the Muslim population were thoroughly
decent people who wanted nothing more than to live their lives in
harmony with other peaceful French people.

That said, the religious and racial tension in Carpentras was palpable in everyday life.

Carpentras has the oldest synagogue in France, and the town's Jewish roots were another source of this tension.

My
wife and I went one night to a choral concert at the town hall by a
renowned Israeli choir, but because of Islamist threats of violence,
security was as tight as it might have been for a visiting foreign
leader, complete with guard dogs and armed troops.

It
was partly because of the death of our Provencal dream that we sold our
Carpentras house three years ago and moved further north. [...]

Until recently, violent anti-semitism in
France was largely seen as the preserve of the far Right, a dark legacy
of Vichy France's collusion with the Nazis during the war, but today it
is another weapon of Islamist intimidation.